From Emporia State University and the Flint Hills of Kansas, we send our
most cordial greetings. We hope that your new school year (probably well
under way by now) got off to a good start and that the whole year will be
productive and enjoyable.

Meantime, on the perennial issue of dues payments and status, we should mention
that we recently had to remove, regretfully, some 20 names from the active
to the inactive files, due to non-payment dating back to '94 and '95. Likewise,
early in 1999, those members whose years of payment are listed as '96 and
'97 will also be moved to the inactive list. We would therefore like to urge
all of you, most emphatically, to check the number next to your name on the
mailing label. The number should read '98 or later. In paying your dues for
the present year and/or recent past years, please consider paying for multiple
years in advance; the annual rate is still only $20 for regular members and
$10 for students. If you have any questions about your dues and membership
status, please don't hesitate to contact us immediately. As noted in the
previous newsletter, our address, phone, and e-mail are as follows:

Dr. William H. Clamurro, Chair

office phone: 316-341-5519

Division of Foreign Languages

e-mail: clamurrw@emporia.edu

Emporia State University

Emporia, KS 66801-5087

FAX: 316-341-5681

Due to the fact that the spring Newsletter was preempted (as it were) by
the publication of the first edition of the CSA directory, herewith some
news items that should have been noted then:
Prof. C. B. Johnson reports that, under
the rubric the most diversified city celebrates the most universal
book, the local cervantistas (of Los Angeles), our students,
colleagues, and friends staged a semi-marathon reading of Don Quijote
at UCLA in conjunction with the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on Saturday
25 April. From 10 am to some time after 5 pm, about 50 people read from En
un lugar de la Mancha . . . to somewhere in I, 23. Most
chose to read in Spanish. Three or four read in English, two in French, one
in Catalan, and one in Korean. The Spanish Consul, D. Herminio Morales
Fernández, read the escrutinio de los libros, with come
flair, I might add. Some of the cervantistas participating were Susana
Hernández Araico (CSU Pomona), Luis Avilés (UC Irvine), Jim
Fogelquist (UC Irvine), Patricia Parr (CSU San Bernardino; Jim was in Spain
celebrating Tirso at the Guggenheim in Bilbao), Bruce Birmingham (USC), y
su servidor. The idea came from Luis Murillo, who had proposed a public reading
a year ago. A bad cold kept Luis from participating. Others who sent regrets
were Michael McGaha and Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce.
Prof. Johnson also notes that Cervantes'
theatre is alive and well in LA. From mid-July to mid-August, the tiny Stages
Theatre in Hollywood offered a spirited, professional production of La
guarda cuidadosa and El retablo de las maravillas in English
translation. Stages Theatre is the creation of Sonia Lloveras (producer)
and her husband Paul Verdier (artistic director). Mr Verdier also played
the role of Chanfalla in Retablo. Since its founding in 1982,
Stages Theatre has specialized in avant-garde twentieth-century playwrights
such as Ionesco and Pavlosky, which makes this summer's excursion into Cervantes
particularly significant, as it locates him in the company that some of us
have always thought he belongs in. Plans are afoot for a production in Spanish,
with consultation by Moshe Lazar, Jim Parr, and Carroll Johnson.
Recent book publications that have come to
our notice include Maria Augusta de Costa Vieira's study, O Dito pelo
Não-Dito: Paradoxos de Dom Quixote (São Paulo, 1998), and
also Dominick Finello's Cervantes: Essays on Social and Literary
Polemics (London: Tamesis). Those interested in Prof. Finello's study
may contact Boydell & Brewer, PO Box 41026, Rochester, NY 14604-4126
(phone: 716-275-0419; FAX: 716-271-8778).
Another forthcoming book of interest, to appear
under the general editorship of Nicholas Spadaccini, in the Hispanic Issues
series, is Cervantes and His Postmodern Constituencies, edited by
Anne J. Cruz and Carroll B. Johnson. (This will be the first volume published
by Hispanic Issues in collaboration with Garland Publishing, a member of
the Taylor and Francis Group.) The contents of this book will include an
Introduction by C. B. Johnson; then

James Iffland, Cervantismo as Social Praxis in the neo-Post
Age: Are We Kidding Ourselves?

The book concludes with an Afterword by David Castillo and Nicholas Spadaccini,
Cervantes and the Culture Wars.

At the recent congreso of the Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas
(Madrid, 6-11 July)at which no less than Sus Majestades los Reyes de
España presided at the first plenary session!Cervantes and
cervantismo as always played a significant part. Two of the plenary
addresses dealt with Cervantes: Giuseppe Di Stefano, A las espaldas
de don Quijote and José Manuel Blecua, Don Quijote
de la Mancha y la informática. One of the many Encuentros
de investigadores was devoted to recent scholarship and featured a detailed
presentation by Eduardo Urbina (Texas A & M) on his Cervantes Project
2001. Ponencias dealing with Cervantes were numerous and included
the following:

Concerning upcoming meetings of interest, you are reminded that the CSA will
sponsor two panels at the MLA Convention in San Francisco, 27-30 December
1998. The first, Cervantine Ambiguities I: Gender Instability in Las
dos doncellas, will offer the following presentations:

The upcoming conference of the PAMLA (6-8 November 1998), to take place at
Scripps College, Claremont CA, will include a session on Cervantes entitled
Economies of Cervantes. The papers will include the following:

William H. Clamurro (Emporia SU), The Price of Love: The Conflictive
Economies of La gitanilla; Rosilie Hernández-Pecoraro
(U of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Women, Money and Power: Where do
Gender and Economy Meet in Cervantine Texts?; and Carroll B. Johnson
(UCLA), Sex, Economy and Family Relations in the Captive Captain's
Tale.

We would like to remind any and all interested parties that the search is
still on for a new editor for the journal Cervantes to take over from
Prof. McGaha with the beginning of the calendar year 2000. For an outline
of what this entails, please see the February 1998 Newsletter. Interested
parties should contact Prof. Carroll B. Johnson at the address given below.
Similarly, the search continues for a replacement for your humble servant
as CSA Secretary-Treasurer. Volunteers and/or people wishing to nominate
someone for the post should contact Prof. Carroll B. Johnson, CSA President
(Department of Spanish and Portuguese, UCLA, Los Angeles CA 90024; e-mail:
johnson@humnet.ucla.edu). Anyone interested in learning more about what the
job involvesor as we might put it, the ineffable joys and delights
of the officeis most cordially invited to contact us directly.

Once again, we wish all of you a most stimulating and enjoyable academic
year. We look forward to seeing many of you at the upcoming meetings, and
we especially look forward to receiving your dues payments very soon! Warmest
best wishes.

Due to a most lamentable, inexcusable, and (frankly) inexplicable negligence
on our part, the ponencias and participants of the first Quijote session
of the July 1998 AIH congreso were omitted from the Newsletter. We apologize
most sincerely and herewith note that information. The session included the
following:

We also neglected to mention that the uncoming meeting of the NEMLA, to take
place in Pittsburgh, PA, 16-17 April 1999, will include two sessions devoted
to Cervantes studies. Bruno Damiani (Catholic U of America) will chair a
session on Cervantes: An Assessment of Recent Scholarship and
a panel entitled Cervantes's Novelas ejemplares at End of
Millennium has been organized by William H. Clamurro. This latter session
will include the following: Ellen C. Frye (Monmouth Coll.), La fuerza
de la sangre or the Power of the Word; Felipe Ruan (U of Toronto),
Carta de guía, carto-grafía: fallas y fisuras en El
licenciado Vidriera and María Antonia Garcés (Cornell
U), Como si algún fantasma . . . del otro mundo
estuviera mirando: The Specters of Algiers in El amante
liberal.

Please note, also, the enclosed CALL FOR PAPERS
recently received. The conference planned for April at the State University
of New York at Buffalo promises to be a most worthwhile and stimulating endeavor.

Finally, we take advantage once again of this occasion, this
postscript, to remind and urge all our colleagues and CSA members
to check the year noted on the mailing label and then to write a check in
the appropriate amount to bring your dues status up to date. Again: regular
members: $20 per year, students: $10 per year. Many thanks for your kind
attention.